With the advent of the internet, cyber security and data privacy is a growing global concern in today's world. Information technology and electronic discovery advances in a variety of industries, including the legal industry have compounded the issue. The United States and many foreign countries have enacted strict and stringent requirements on data privacy and security. Global entities and multinational corporations have struggled to comply with local data privacy laws. Data privacy laws define how companies and individuals must store and manage computer data. However, the laws are complex and sometimes the laws of one jurisdiction are in direct conflict with the laws of another jurisdiction. This has caused companies to give much thought as to how and where it stores their protected data. Because of the evolution of technology, companies are migrating away from managing and storing data internally, and opting instead to store data with a third party. The third party provider provides the physical infrastructure and maintains the data for a large number of customers. This scenario is generally known as the “cloud” or a virtual storage system. Such cloud based systems are used by many companies, but each is maintained by a single cloud service provider or “cloud vendor”.
The development of the cloud has introduced many new challenges for companies. Customers are unclear as to what jurisdiction contains their inactive digital data (i.e. data at rest), since a cloud customer does not know where a cloud vendor maintains its actual physical infrastructure. Other challenges involve data security. Cloud environments can be compromised by hackers or by a company's internal employees ultimately leading to an organization's data being accessed or transferred. If the data is sensitive, such as personally identifiable information (“PII”), the company may be required to make a mandatory disclosure to its customers. In some cases, the company is not aware of such an invasion, and thereby may not make the disclosure they are required to make. In addition, a cloud vendor may go offline or go out of business, thereby creating a potential situation where a subscriber cannot access its own data. The present invention solves many of these and other challenges.
The present invention relates to a cloud based system including the creation of a system which causes computer data to be redundant and jurisdiction independent. In the present application, a data file is segmented and encrypted wherein each data file segment is striped across multiple cloud service providers. Thus, in the event each cloud service provider maintains physical storage in a different jurisdiction, then each encrypted segment will be at rest in a different jurisdiction. Therefore, each encrypted segment contains no readable data on its own, and must be reassembled with its other segments before the whole can be decrypted. Only once the segments from different jurisdictions are assembled can it be decrypted and read. The disclosed system enables a data file to be jurisdictionally independent until it is reassembled, and once the data is reassembled will it be able to be governed. The present application enables a company to subscribe to many cloud vendors, and not have to worry about their data at rest. For example, during the legal discovery process, a company can choose the jurisdiction for data production simply by reassembling its data in that jurisdiction.